Tag Archives: cinema

20 years ago this year, I walked into the office of the Toronto International Film Festival, at Church and Carlton, and naîvely asked how I could volunteer. They subsequently exposed me to a world I had never known, through the lens of cinema, transforming the way I saw that world into a realm of possibilities, […]

Rest in peace Robin Williams. As a child, he made me laugh hard, especially with Jonathan Winters at his side. In college he kept me company as I did my homework, watching in awe as he did his crazy characters on David Letterman. He was also so capable of a poignant earnestness and an intense tenor in his […]

Western guilt faces off against eastern shame in the Nagisa Ôshima art-house cinema classic from 1983, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, the long-unavailable war melodrama lovingly remastered and re-released on DVD by The Criterion Collection. Loosely based on Laurens van der Post‘s memoir The Seed and the Sower, screenwriter Paul Mayersberg adapts and transforms the […]

The extras on this disc are fabulous. Tokyo-Ga, in particular, is fantastic. It’s fascinating to see what Chishu Ryu looked like in his old age, and a real eye-opener to learn that he was almost the same age as Setsuko Hara when they were making pictures together, considering he was most often playing her father. […]